 Welcome back to Think Tech. This is the state of clean energy, our flagship energy show every Wednesday at 4 p.m. I'm Jay Fidel. And we're talking today with Richard Ha, who's what do I call an energy environmentalist on a big island. And for many years he had this wonderful farm. Was it Hamakua farm? Hamakua farms in Hamakua, Richard, wasn't it? It's Hamakua Springs. Right. I remember. Now you're not doing the farm anymore, but you're certainly doing energy. Tell us about it. Yeah, so well, you know, I went back in 10 years ago, I went over to explore and learn about energy because my costs were going up, you know, about 2008 when the oil price spiked. So I went over there to one of five associations for the study of pink oil. And it was in Houston. And the first thing I picked up, there was about maybe 500 of us there. The first thing I noticed was they said the world had been using twice as much oil as it had been finding and had been doing that for the last 20 years. And right there, you know, as a banana farmer, I knew that this, you know, it's a finite research. It's something that I'm going to pay attention to. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I, you know, I just got off the phone with Lou Pugirisi, who was a think tank person with E. Prink in Washington, and he was in China and Japan looking at their energy supply. And one of the elements that came through is that the U.S. is under Trump is exporting substantial qualities of gas, including LNG. And for that matter, oil. We were having what he called an energy and that's mostly fossil fuel or renaissance right now. And so if you thought that people were listening to Greta Thunberg, if you thought that people were concerned about climate change, you got to moderate your thinking. In fact, we're generating more gas and oil than we were a few years ago, and we're selling more of it to the world. And that's likely to continue. So here in Hawaii, you know, we're focused on clean energy, but, you know, we're probably ahead in terms of percentages of most of the states and the national averages anyway. And so to me, it's very important that we keep on doing that, although I think we have to recognize that the world right now under this administration is not as concerned about it as we are. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and the second thing I learned when I was there was this concept called energy return on investment. And there's this Professor Charlie Hall, who's the father of EROI. And basically what it says is it takes energy to get energy. The net energy that results is what society gets to use. So as you know, several examples, back in the 1930s, the energy in one barrel of oil would get you 100. Today, it's down to around 20 to one. Shell oil and the tar sands is like six to one. So it's getting harder and harder. The net return is less and less. And the more you go, the more energy it takes to go find it. When you get to one to one, there's no point in going anymore because there's no benefit, energy benefit to it. That doesn't mean there's no oil. That means there's a lot of oil. It's just not worth going after. Well, arguably, people in the industry, the engineers and scientists and the like who work in and for the industry are finding new technologies that will improve that ratio and will make it cheaper to get this fuel out of the ground. But certainly, we knew a long time ago that shale requires a lot of energy to squeeze the shale and sort of crack the shale physically into oil. We know that the oil is in the shale, but getting it out is expensive. And the same thing with the tar sands. The tar sands, tar is mixed with sand and the tar is oil, but you have to process it to get it out. And what all that tells me is that there's not as much liquid oil fuel available and that we have to use these new techniques and we have to use this technology and it's going to get more expensive as we go forward. It's very troublesome. We need to focus on other kinds of energy, especially clean energy, given the crisis of climate change. I say crisis because I think that climate change is the biggest story in the news every day. We all have to be very mindful because our lives and fortunes are going to depend on how we handle climate change the whole world. Absolutely, absolutely. In 2009, that's when shale just started and I was going to these peak oil conferences and we realized it's just started. Nobody really knew what the potential was, but I was sitting in Denver at the next peak oil conference and in this panel discussion, Mark Berman said that they studied 4,000 shale wells in the Barnett shale because the Barnett was the new one at that time. That's 4,000 wells. He said the average well produced 96, I'm sorry, 90% of what he was going to produce all within four years. And I'm sitting in the back of the room thinking holy smokes. Does that mean that every four years we have to drill another well just to stay even? And in 2009, the answer was yes. But since 2009 to now, they found many different shale plays. I'll total of about 10. Most of them are stable and in decline. And the Barnett shale, which was starting its production at that time, is now in permanent decline 10 years later. So I already knew it in 2009. But now it's getting to the point that the Permian Basin, which is the largest supplier of shale oil for the US. But where is that? That's in Texas. Permian. Yeah. So what they found is that the shale wells, what people do is they go and drill the sweet spots wherever they think is the best place so that they can get the most money for their efforts. So they did that in the Permian. But now 50% of the wells in the Permian, all right, wells that they drilled in between. So the mother wells, they set it up and they did pretty well. And now they're going to what they call the shale wells. But the problem with shale wells is it cannibalizes from others. So the productivity of it is less. Now you mentioned technology. And of course, in the last three, four years, technology has increased at the production and lowered the cost, but did not increase the amount of a shale well down there. So what they did was instead of four years, now it comes out in three years. So what we're doing is more rapidly depleting the resource. That's what's going on now. I remember when these issues first flowed into public discussion, one of the big points of discussion was how much oil is left. And that seemed to go away when we were told that oh no, the technology can provide more oil than before. And then of course it also flowed out of discussion when we were told that there's effectively an unlimited supply of natural gas down there, including LNG. But I think the issue still exists, doesn't it? At some point along the way, we're going to run out. We're going to run out of both. Isn't that true, Richard? It is because the shale gas and oil are related to each other. They have the same characteristics. It won't last forever. But the shale gas now, of course, there's a lot they flare it and they give it away practically if they could. But that's not going to last forever. Once they are able to export it and start selling it, it'll decline as well. And the price is going to go up. The trick is to get to alternative fuels for many reasons, but especially climate change and the effect of fossil fuel, but other reasons too. And we have to move that away. Unfortunately, as Greta Thunberg has made all too clear, is that people are not countries and governments are really not addressing this problem. They're rather going the other way in a lot of cases. And for the lack of leadership by this administration in Washington right now, other countries are not as excited perhaps as they were when COP21 and climate change issues were at the top of the agenda. So Hawaii can be a leader in addressing fossil fuels. And when we talked to you and me a day or two ago, you were talking about the great game changer. And I think that's very interesting not only for Hawaii where it would happen, but for any place watching Hawaii, any place affected by what we do here as leaders in renewable energy. Can you talk about the great game changer, Richard? Yeah, but first I'd like to comment about Helco and Hiko and what they've done. They've done a really good job because they've been leading the whole country actually in fossil fuels and renewables and stuff like that. But having said that, we have on the big island geothermal, and not only in the East Rift but around the base of Malacca, a lot of heat. So the way the geothermal company and Helco works together is that they have a lot of the 38 megawatts geothermal provides now. Ash goes to guarantee that they'll use it and they'll pay for it. The other half is standby. So in other words, if something bad happens, then they get to switch through the switch and they expect to get the electricity almost instantaneously. Now the game changer is this. Instead of throwing the switch off when it's not needed and just waiting a standby, throw the switch on and generate hydrogen as a byproduct. So now when you think about it, they're making money off the main product which is the half that they supply and which the utility needs as a base power. But they have all this other capacity that they're not using. They're just waiting to be asked to use it. So instead of just waiting, convert it to hydrogen, it doesn't cost anything. It's a byproduct. So it has really strong implications because the US mainland, there's a difference between us and the US mainland. We decided to stay with fossil fuel, which can hit the oil, which we're using now. The rest of the country went to natural gas and coal and stuff, but primarily natural gas. Natural gas is pretty cheap right now. So everybody is concerned about the carbon that comes out of it and climate change as you're pointing out. So there's two ways to get hydrogen. One is to take apart natural gas. When you do that, you have to add in costs. First, you got to pay for it. And second of all, when you take it apart, you got to deal with the carbon. On the other hand, so you build up your costs. On the other hand, you come to Hawaii and hydrogen is a byproduct. It's just an afterthought. It's practically free. And that is the gain changer because Hawaii has never been in front of the energy situation like it could be in this particular instance. Well, what are the other byproducts, Richard? So I know. So the hydrogen is a byproduct of geothermal. What are the other byproducts? From geothermal? Yeah. Well, basically it's just the fact that they're not using the electricity. They're just waiting on standby. I see, I see, I see. And then that's a battery too. The hydrogen serves as a battery. It's dispatchable anytime you want. Absolutely. And you can transport it. And it's a little bit more complicated. But it's been done. Different parts of the world, they do different ways of handling hydrogen. So it has been done already. So it's not something that is brand new? Well, I mean, technically, it's brand new. But you know, let me raise two questions about this model of using geothermal to create hydrogen and then using the hydrogen wherever and whenever you like. I mean, it all rings true to me. I've been following hydrogen for a long time. I've been following geothermal for a long time. And I know that HNEI, White Natural Energy Institute, and Rick Rochelot and Mitch Ewan have been working on this for a long time. And so is Stan Osterman, the hydrogen coordinator for the state. But I get two issues that I'd like to mention to you. The first issue is geothermal ran into, what do we call it, cultural problems, which turned out to be political and legal problems back in the 90s. And essentially, you know, the protesters there, mostly Native Hawaiians, who felt that, you know, taking geothermal out of the ground was to penetrate Haley's breast in the Big Island. And that was offensive to them. And so they fought back. They protested and there were incidents of violence. There were incidents of threats, death threats, through the scientists and the engineers involved. It was all terribly unpleasant. It ultimately settled down in the late 90s. And ORMAT came in and became the operator of the geothermal facility there in Puna, Puna Geothermal Adventure. And it's been generating, you know, at a limited rate, I would say, since then until the eruption a couple of years ago. So the problem with all of that is the resistance hasn't gone away. And then politically, there's been a kind of cap on the amount of geothermal that PGV has been able to take out of it. I want to say it's something around 38 megawatts, maybe 40. But these wells could provide much more than that. And they've been limited as a practical matter because of the, you know, the political limitations, political pushback. And so I don't think that pushback has ended. I think that if you wanted to expand the production, if you wanted to even resume the production, there's an issue there because, you know, as we know, you can make a protest that will stop a project. And right now, I think there's probably people who would like to stop this project on the same basis they wanted to stop it in the 90s. So we have a sort of built in political cultural limitation about PGV, which is the biggest source of geothermal in the state right now. I know there are other possibilities, but the one that's working and has proven out is PGV. So what do you say to that, Richard? How do we get by that problem? Well, you know, I've been involved in that. And I'm trying as much as possible to educate about that because I'm directly involved with the 30 meter telescope. I'm one of the people that are pro 30 meter telescope. So during the discussion and the discussion that I like to have is a courteous one, not us against you kind of a thing, more a discussion about the facts. Yeah. So every chance I get when we're talking about the 30 meter telescope, I bring up geothermal and I talk about the characteristics and why it's safe. And things have changed, you know, I can feel it. It's changed quite a bit. And here's why, because the focus that was there many years ago is might be focused more on monarchy. And then that's one thing. And the second thing is there was a eruption that happened, a couple of eruptions just recently. And the folks that were involved directly, especially Ikeika Marzol knows exactly how the Riftstone works because he was walking the ground. He knew where the lava was coming, where the Riftstone was going all the way out to the ocean. So he knows all that he can he saw all of that. And he knows that the geologists and the science and the people from the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, you know, when they do the reports, because they track all the earthquakes and everything like that. It's not going to fall off the side of the earth. You know, it's such a tiny project relative to what geothermal represents. And if you saw a picture from the air, what you would see is geothermal, except for several two, three wells. It's intact. The whole area around there, several hundred houses disappeared. So why is that? It's because they set up the location of the PGD site, the thermal site on the high ground. So when it erupted, it went all around because it was lower. And PGD is on the higher ground. And the reason it's on the people's side is because they deliberately, they know where the East Riftstone was, and they set it up deliberately to be on the evil side where the transmission lines were. So if you just went to the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, talk to the scientists, they would be able to explain the characteristics and the safety of it. Richard, why don't we take a short break? Then we'll come back in one minute and continue this conversation. Aloha. My name is Wendy Lowe, and I want you to join me as we take our health back. On my show, all we do is talk about things in everyday life in Hawaii or abroad. I have guests on board that will just talk about different aspects of health in every way, whether it's medical health, nutritional health, diabetic health, you name it, we'll talk about it, even financial health. We'll even have some of the Miss Hawaii's on board, and all the different topics that I feel will make your health and your lifestyle a lot better. So come join me. I welcome you to take your health back. Mahalo. Aloha. I'm Stan Osterman, Stan the Energy Manager. Every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. If you're really interested in finding out what's going on in energy, especially here in Hawaii, but also all the way around the world, and especially if it has to do with hydrogen, look into Stan the Energy Man every Friday, 12 o'clock Think Tech Hawaii. Be there. Aloha. Okay, we're back with Richard Ha, who joins us on my phone from the Big Island. And we're talking about we're on the Hawaii State of Clean Energy Show every Wednesday at 4pm. And we're talking about the game changer hydrogen on the Big Island and maybe more. So Richard, you were you were telling me how we can get by the political cultural problem that has existed around Poonajee, a thermal venture over the past, however, many 20 years or so. Yeah, and we had conversations with Bill Eyla, the director of the HHL, Department of Hawaiian Homes Lands. And on Department of Hawaiian Homes Lands, there's a geothermal. So, so just imagine part of the problem we have that 30 meter telescope are Hawaiians that are very upset because they're dying on the wait list for the Department of Hawaiian Homes Lands. So if we were able to enable a geothermal operation there, it'll do several things. One is diversify the risk. Yeah. So you put it up there on Hawaii Homes Land. You know, the fact that the Department of Hawaiian Homes Lands owns the resource means they don't have to pay royalties. That royalties get up to about a million dollars a year just in saved royalties. That would be an income stream, not counting the income stream of actually doing a geothermal operation. Yeah, that could really help them. No, that could be a great, great contribution to an improvement in the quality of life. Absolutely. And can you imagine if they can go to hydrogen, which they can, of course, for the same reason that's a byproduct, if they went to hydrogen, and they started exporting it, let's say it's going into Oahu, for example, or exported wherever you because you can be exported. That income stream would be pretty incredible because it would all be focused on Hawaiians. And you know, that's what we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Folks that don't get any benefit. Yeah. This is this a direct benefit from geothermal. Yeah. So but one thing though is, okay, let's assume that we have geothermal wells working at Puno or elsewhere. We have to have the infrastructure to convert process, I guess, the geothermal into the hydrogen as a byproduct and so forth. That's going to cost a pretty penny, isn't it? How do you do that? Yes. So if you were to use alcohols electricity to do it, it would be very expensive because it'll be like 30 something cents a kilowatt hour. On the other hand, if you made it on site at the geothermal site, then it's a byproduct. You can charge whatever you want. You could be hardly nothing. It depends on, of course, the deal that you can work. Yeah. But we can, using this as a byproduct, we can undersell any source of hydrogen coming from the US, because they have to either natural gas, then they have to transport it, and they have to give it up the carbon. So for the first time, we'll have an advantage over the whole United States, you take the heat, and you're generating electricity, and Helco takes 20. And they tell you, you got to be able to provide 18 whenever they want it. So what they do is you just turn it off. What I'm saying is that don't turn it off. Keep it running and be catching it out of it. Because it doesn't matter. Yeah, because we're going to be over the hospital for 500,000 years. I see, I see. So you do go through the process of turning the geothermal into electricity, but that part which would be curtailed or that part which you don't use, you use that to create the hydrogen, and you put that hydrogen in a bottle. Right, exactly. Now all of a sudden, hydrogen from hydrolysis from electricity going to water outcompetes thinking about natural gas. Because it's a byproduct. Yeah, that's the game changer right there is the byproduct. So let me ask you and you alluded to this earlier. And this is the other question I wanted to pose to you is transportation. You know, I've been to HGAT Stan Osserman showed me around. And he showed me these big tanks where you put the hydrogen and you store it and you and you transport it. And it within those tanks, it can it can go really anywhere. And the question question is, how much transportation infrastructure is in place? And how can we expand that to make the export of the hydrogen in the tanks, a working model, you know, a successful export experience to the mainland and to Asia, wherever, you have to have certain equipment, and you have to have certain equipment, the receiving end, take the hydrogen out of the tank, and use it for whatever, you know, whatever activity you want to use it for. So where are we on that continuum? What do we have to do to build that infrastructure, so that it becomes marketable and we can, you know, derive the benefits you were talking about? Yeah, so so Stan Osserman and Mr. and folks, they know people who who actually do it. And as a matter of fact, Japan is moving toward hydrogen economy, if they can get there. And they've had two consciences now, so it's brand new. So there's a lot of things that's going to be developing. But as I understand it, you could you could ship it, it's more involved because the molecule is really small. But but it can be done. And it's pretty much like protein, you just ship it that way is how I understand it. And you can ship more if you put it on the pressure and stuff like that. So that's all chemical stuff. Right. Well, you mentioned that Paul Brubaker was appearing a couple days from now in the Hawaii Economic Association to discuss this subject. So what do you know about that? And when where does that fit in the in the picture of trying to develop hydrogen as an export product? Yeah, so so they'll have it at the Holly Kalani, yeah, and it's all day affair. All day at the Holly Kalani. Okay, okay, it's the annual conference. And Paul has a breakout session. And he'll be the moderator, asking the question, what is the great game changer in the next 10 years? And I'm saying this is the great game changer. Now, you mentioned Greta. Can you imagine now, the geothermal is the greenest of all possible sources right here. Because instead of digging it out of the ground and using diesel to run the machinery to get what you got to get out of the ground, and heating it up and mixing it and making it into panels or whatever else you make it out of. And then with fossil fuels and then shipping it to Hawaii, or to the mainland with fossil fuels. You don't have to do any of that. All you got to do is get the heat from underground. There is no carbon involved at all. So on the front end, geothermal is absolutely clean. On the back end, there's no carbon. The only thing that comes out of your tailpipe is water. Yeah. So now, we can be the leaders of the whole nation and as an example, and somebody should tell Greta that. We should have her here, Richard. You should have her on the show. You, me and Greta. Yeah, absolutely. One thing that occurs to me from what you say, though, is very interesting is that if we made batteries, sort of like that analogy that you made about how many barrels of oil it takes to bring up a barrel of oil. If we make batteries, we have to spend a lot of energy and resources, you know, building the battery. And these big batteries take an awful lot of energy and resources. And over time, they decline too. And you have to get another one. Then you have a disposal problem, depending on what the battery is made of, what are you going to do with it when it's when it's spent. So in the case of geothermal, none of those issues exist. You put it in a tank, it stays in the tank. They don't have any secondary effects to that. So as you said, it's a very good renewable. And it doesn't have any negative implications as other renewables might have or batteries might have. Yeah. Yeah. And then take a look at this. In the industrial scale, geothermal, that Kauai has two, they only have two hours of battery storage, you know, think about that. Yeah. Only four hours. Yeah. You really need about three weeks of battery storage to have a stable, dependable source of electricity. But why don't they do more than four, four hours? Because it costs too much. That's right. So it will never replace oil. So what is our replacement? Because that's what we got to do, right? We have none. So if you had hydrogen, you could have as many of those tanks as you want all stacked up ready to go anytime. And you could use the ones you want to use and leave the other ones for later. So the whole thing would allow for as much storage as you want over as many days as you want, we could have a storm that lasts a long time. And still there would be, there would be power. So imagine what that would look like. So here's a hydrogen fueling station. It's just like a regular gas station. It drives up, takes you five minutes, it fills up your tank and you're on your way. And all you got to do is bring the hydrogen to the place, put it in storage, and you have an electrolyzer that puts it in your, so you can put it in your car. So the economics is this. The difference is that above, if the cost of the hydrogen is equal to 10 cents a kilowatt hour at the nozzle, it's equal to gasoline. So now try to think about that. It's 10 cents. Can you get it from the source, which is a byproduct to the gas station at 10 cents? Because if you can, your economical now, if you can't, then you wait a little while until the natural gas prices go up. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so either way, you know, it's a finite resource. We're on the winning end of this deal. Well, Richard, we're out of time. That's Richard Har from the Big Island, a fellow who has followed energy, especially renewable energy for many years. And we certainly always enjoyed talking with you, Richard. I look forward to the next time. And I'm sure there'll be more to report. Thank you so much. Oh, you're welcome. Aloha.